With a whomp and a screech, we touch down. I strain my eyes to spot people but see no one. The machine slows to a crawl, then stops. The place is deserted. It gives me the creeps.
‘Please wait for permission to leave the aircraft,’ sounds from the radio.
‘I’m sorry, what? My friend is dying—’
‘Security is approaching. Wait for permission.’
‘The fuck I will!’
‘If you open the door without our permission, you will be shot. Stay in the aircraft.’
‘You 54 kbit ass! You…cheating shit bucket!’ I extract myself from my hanging seat and almost face plant the floor. Scrambling to Katvar, I see that he’s stopped seizing and his tense side has relaxed a little.
But he’s unconscious.
I stand and peek through a window to find four men approaching in a run, their assault rifles pressed to their chests, muzzles down. The good thing is, they don’t look like the BSA. But they don’t look like Sequencers, either.
Flicking off the safety of my pistol, I leap back to the cockpit. Bohemian villages are at twelve per cent. Exactly where we started. Patches of sunlight dapple the airstrip. I could just take off again and—
‘Sandra, this is Alta tower. Security is positioned at the door, a physician is awaiting your friend. You are now allowed to exit.’
I sink to my knees and curl my hand around Katvar’s jaw. If I open this door, we both might be dead in seconds. If I take off, he’ll die, and that’s a given. Inhaling a steadying breath, I return to the cockpit and pick up the radio. ‘I don’t see a physician.’
‘He’s waiting in the hangar.’
‘All I see are four armed men, Mr. Turd Burglar. I’m not opening this door until the physician has moved his arse to my friend and looked at him.’
‘Negative. If you want treatment for your friend, you’ll have to remove all weapons from your person, open the door, and allow security to enter.’
Bear Butt is fucking us over.
My hand hovers over the engine controls. One flick is all it takes to leave. But where to go? Tromsø is what — two, three hundred kilometres away? I could take off and find another doctor to treat Katvar. I could fly low so as not to make it worse for him and… Shit, I can’t. I still need the sun to refuel the machine. And Katvar’s horribly still form tells me he has no time for this crap.
Swallowing, I approach the door, and shout, ‘I am coming out now.’
With a soft hiss, the door opens. A muzzle is in my face the same instant I’m pointing my pistol at a…woman? Her stance and fluid movements tell me she’s not one to fuck with. Her hair is shorn to her skull where her fur hood droops. From afar I took her for a man, but her eyes, mouth and cheekbones tell a different story. Definitely not BSA.
Her gaze doesn’t waver as she says, ‘If you want to live, lower your gun.’
Meeting someone down the barrel of a gun doesn’t make for pleasant conversations.
‘Promise you’ll save him.’ I tip my chin in Katvar’s direction.
‘Do I look like a physician to you?’ she bites out.
‘What do I know? Get me a doctor and I’ll lower my weapon.’
‘You are in no position to negotiate. I’ll count to three, then I will fire. One…’
I don’t move a muscle.
‘Two…’
‘If he dies, I’ll kill you.’ I flip the gun in my hand, and hold it out with two fingers. She snatches it faster than I can curse, steps back and waves at me to hop down to the tarmac. Three men clamber up into the aircraft. Two drag Katvar out roughly by his armpits, the third grabs the ultrasound scanner.
I’m going to kill Bear Butt.
Ten
As we run toward the hangar, I cut a quick glance over my shoulder. The man behind Female Killer Machine is carrying the ultrasound scanner, the other two…are searching the sky? Everyone seems on high alert. From the corners of my vision, I see another man hopping into our solar plane and moving it off the landing strip. This place is an anthill — you throw a few bread crumbs on it and the goodies are carried away faster than you can say, “You’re welcome, creeps.”
The hangar gate opens silently and I’m pushed through. Katvar’s boots scrape on the concrete. His head hangs low. Blood from his gunshot wound is beginning to seep through the bandage.
Several steps into the hangar, I put on the brakes, ignoring the shove of the gun between my shoulder blades. ‘I need to check his breathing! You’re being too rough with him!’
‘I’ve got it,’ someone behind me answers. A new guy. We must have passed him on the way in.
The woman steps back from me, keeping her gun trained on my centre mass. ‘I told you to wait until we searched them.’ She sounds annoyed. As if she’s his bodyguard and he never listens to her warnings. I make a mental note to exploit this weak link if Katvar and I need to disappear quickly.
The guy doesn’t reply as he kneels next to Katvar, pulls his lids apart and shifts a small beam of light in and out of his face. He unwraps the bandage, muttering, ‘Tangential gunshot wound. You said you have an ultrasound— Aw, thanks, mate.’
The scanner is handed to the new guy, who switches it on and presses the gel pillow to Katvar’s wound. ‘Bullet didn’t breach the skull.’ Then he moves it to the opposite side of Katvar’s head. ‘Herniation of the brain. As I thought. Hand me my bag.’
I creep closer, but Female Killer Machine stops me.
‘The bleeding was on the other side of his head?’ I ask.
‘Yes. It’s quite common.’
I want to smack my head against something hard. Studying basic emergency medicine goes on my to-do list.
The physician slides a needle into Katvar’s elbow bend and attaches a tube and an IV bottle. He looks up at me and says, ‘He’s getting hypertonic saline to decrease the pressure in his brain. That’s all I can do at the moment.’
My gaze skitters to the bottle. “23.4% NaCl” it reads. ‘You are giving him salt?’
‘Yes. It’s simple but effective.’ He looks at a watch on his wrist. I’ve never seen anyone with a wrist watch before, but maybe doctors need them?
‘Three minutes. The tension in his arm is lessening. See?’ he says.
‘It’s…helping?’ I don’t dare hope. Is that why the over-salted stew made Katvar’s headache better?
‘For now, but that doesn’t mean he’ll survive.’ He looks up at his “mate” and tells him that the patient can now be moved to the hospital. ‘You, too,’ he says to me.
Female Killer Machine protests, but Physician Guy gets the last word. I keep my mouth shut because I want to go where Katvar goes, and to find out if Physician Guy’s soft side can be exploited. If it can…well, I’m not going to hesitate.
We exit the hangar and rush into a squat building. Its insides are crumbling. Strange metal stairs with teeth-like steps — half of them missing or loose — connect to a lower level. Tiny shrubs and lichen have crept through cracks in the structure; crooked miniature birches have managed to grab onto larger fissures. Icy wind blows through empty window and door frames. I stumble through an opening, knees weak, mind mushy. Coming down from the high of danger has never been my favourite.
Again, the woman jabs her rifle into my back. Physician Guy’s “mate” is holding a door open for us. I must be having some kind of blackout because I can’t recall what happened between the broken-down airport building and this door. I guess I need a break. Physician Guy is saying something that sounds like a drawn-out underwater fart.
Then the floor warps and is yanked from under my feet.
Green paint peels off the ceiling. Lights flicker. My head hurts. The wall touching my shoulder is the brownish-grey of post-war concrete. Someone nearby is screaming. My body seems buried under sacks of grain, or whatever some asshole might have thrown over me. Blinking, I gaze down to my boots. Only my clothes are covering me. No other weight.
Still, I feel crushed.
The floor
under my butt is hard and cold. My anorak is tucked under my torso, the pullover under my head. I find my sleeve rolled up and a needle in my elbow bend, right were my 1/2986 scar is. That’s what’s left of humanity: the 2986th part of ten billion. I wonder if that number is right, or if we’re still going downhill since the last count. Or if anyone is even bothering to count us.
My eyes follow the tube attached to the needle to find two bottles hanging upside down in a net and labelled “Ringer” and “Glucose.” Glucose sounds delicious. Wish I could taste its sweetness on my parched tongue. Ringer sounds like it’s supposed to wake me from my daze. I doubt it, though. Fighting dizziness, I push myself up on my butt, press my back to a cold wall, and draw my legs up to my chest.
There are more patients filling this corridor, all lying on their backs or curled up on their sides. Most are sleeping or unconscious, some with IVs like mine. Looks like Ringer is the magic solution to all your health problems. Even for the guy with a bloody stump instead of a lower leg. I squint at his bluish face. Is he…dead?
‘Hello?’ I try. My voice sounds weird. Like I haven’t used it in a long time. ‘I need a doctor here.’
A few heads turn in my direction. People mutter in a language I don’t understand.
‘It’s not your turn, chicken breast!’ A man with a greasy beard covering much of his face and a heavy Norwegian or Swedish accent hollers from five patients down. ‘I was here before you.’ For emphasis, he taps gnarled fingers against the bloody bandage that covers his chest.
‘’Kay,’ I answer and take a hard look at the guy with one and a half legs. Seems like he won’t need a doctor, judging from his colour and his unmoving ribcage.
So that’s why Bear Butt said the hospital was full. It’s not only full, it’s stuffed to the eyeballs.
‘Why all the injured people?’ I ask Greasy Beard.
‘Which hole in this goddamned earth did you crawl from?’
‘Greenland.’ That’s when I realise Female Killer Machine isn’t here pointing a gun at me. Strange. But who am I to complain?
‘That explains it, I guess.’ Greasy Beard coughs. The bandage around his chest darkens. ‘The BSA attacked Tromsø a week ago. Heavy losses on both sides. Alta sent their only aircraft. A fat antique that’s still running on some old-fashioned jet fuel. Or…was. Fuel’s gone now. But they got us out. They got us out.’ His voice is wet and bubbly.
‘The BSA took Tromsø?’
He grunts an affirmative noise.
Fuck. We probably made the BSA a bit angry what with blowing up their satellite network and all. But they must have been planning the attack on Tromsø long before that.
‘Did the Sequencers come to help?’ I ask, eyeing a large double door through which occasional screams are coming.
Greasy Beard chokes on a mouthful of air, and cackles like an axe chopping wood.
I’m getting worried my stupid questions might kill him. ‘There was a man brought in with me. Any idea where he is?’
‘Dark hair, green face, leaky head?’
I nod.
‘The boy is in the operating room.’ Greasy Beard waggles his fingers in the direction of the double door.
I push myself to my feet, contemplating whether to rip out the IV or just unhook the bottles from the nail in the wall and carry them with me. Might need both my hands, though. ‘Who’s screaming in there?’ It’s not Katvar’s voice, that much is clear.
‘Whoever they’re cutting up.’ He makes it sound as if it’s as obvious as gravity and I’m stupid to even ask.
My hand drops to where I strapped my knife to my hip but I come up empty. Assholes. I pull the needle from my arm and step over several people to reach the double door. It groans as if it’s about to come off its hinges when I push it open.
Three people in worn aprons of different colours stand around a fourth, who lies on a rickety table, a piece of leather in her mouth, her forehead slick with sweat. Four gloved hands poke around in a large wound on the woman’s thigh.
‘Closing up now,’ one man mutters through a handkerchief tied around his mouth and nose.
My gaze scans the floor. The concrete shows in patches where its plastic coating has been worn off by centuries of boot traffic. Blood splatters around the table, old and new. Patients lining the walls. My heart stops when I spot Katvar. His eyes are shut, his mouth slack, head covered in bandages. I rush to his side, nearly knocking over a cracked plastic chair that has surgical tools spread on its seat.
I check his breathing and heartbeat. Finding both, I press a sob into his chest.
‘Don’t move him,’ a female voice sounds from behind me. ‘His head needs to remain elevated to facilitate drainage.’
I check the bunched up coat under his head, then make sure he can’t roll off it easily. I sit on my haunches to take in the physicians. They’re still operating on the woman, who’s chomping away on her leather gag. Two of them are male — sewing layer upon layer of tissue shut; the other is a female, watching. Physician Guy isn’t here.
‘Will he make it?’ I ask.
‘Maybe,’ she says, not taking her eyes off her patient on the operating table. ‘Do you have antibiotics and painkillers in your plane?’
‘I have a MedKit. But no antibiotics or painkillers.’ I don’t tell her that I’ve used up all the morphine on Katvar, just as she doesn’t tell me the plane has already been searched. That’s what I would have done, anyway.
She doesn’t reply, just nails me a brief, steely gaze.
Her two colleagues start bandaging the woman. One of them speaks in Norwegian or Swedish. Or maybe Dutch. I have no idea. The woman on the table removes the gag from her mouth with feeble fingers and curses at him. Then her arm drops like a rock, her head lolls.
The woman who was talking to me says something about the unconscious woman and checks her pulse.
‘Is she going to be okay?’
‘She isn’t going to lose her leg, if that’s what you mean.’
They carefully lift her from the table and lay her down next to another patient.
‘Doesn’t look like one of your fancy Sequencer hospitals, does it.’ The female physician says. There’s no judgement in her voice, only resignation.
I shrug. ‘I’ve never seen one. Have you?’
She nods once before checking on a man with a thick, fresh bandage around his head. She mutters to him and places a hand over one of his eyes, then the other. ‘Thanks for the ultrasound scanner. It has already saved two lives.’ She points her chin at the man in front of her, and then at Katvar.
‘Can you tell if…’ No, she already said “maybe” when I asked before if he’d make it. ‘Can you tell me anything?’
‘We had to place an emergency drainage. The next twenty-four hours will tell if he survives. But we have no time to monitor him. Feel free to volunteer.’
Two men are hoisting another patient onto the table. A teenage girl who’s eyeing the surgical tools with horror.
‘What kind of emergency…drainage?’ I ask.
The girl on the table lifts her head and spits in broken English, ‘They drilled a hole in his head. But something was wrong with him. His screams were weird.’
Eleven
‘You bitch did what?’ I curl my hands to fists, ready for bloodshed.
‘He was bleeding inside his skull. The pressure on his brain needed to be lowered. Creating an opening usually does that. Got a better idea?’ The female physician doesn’t even look at me.
‘But…’ I don’t have a better idea. My hand gently cups Katvar’s cheek and I wonder if he’s ever going to be okay again. I say as much.
‘Look, we have another forty or fifty patients out there. You aren’t injured and you’re wasting my time. Leave, or start being useful.’
The teenage girl on the operating table fires words at the physicians, gestures at me and squares her chin. She wants me to piss off.
Like I care.
The woman flicks a br
ief glance at me. ‘Find one of the nurses and tell them I said you are to feed and wash the patients.’
‘What about Katvar? He…needs to eat. Hasn’t eaten for days.’ Fuck. I realise my blunder the moment I speak his name. But none of the physicians seems puzzled. Maybe they weren’t told his fake name. Not important when you’re drilling a hole in someone’s head or cutting a leg off, is it?
‘What do you think the IV is for? Now…’ She pulls in a deep breath. The handkerchief covering her nose and mouth dimples. ‘Get out of here, or I’ll make you.’ She touches the side of her thigh as though there’s a gun hidden under her apron.
Maybe there is.
I clear my throat, mutter my thanks, and leave.
The hospital is a maze. When you’re starved and exhausted, your trek through its long corridors seems without end. Eventually, I find a nurse elbow-deep in a bucket of soap water. She’s scrubbing the floor of another operating room. She tosses me a brush when I ask if I can help. I kneel and get to work.
When spots dance in my vision and I keep dropping the brush, she scolds me and drags me two floors down, then through an empty eating hall and into a large kitchen. She plops me on a wooden crate and scoops cooked grain, meat, and an extra dollop of lard into a bowl.
I put my cheek on my palm, elbow on my thigh, and spoon food into my mouth. It’s all I can do not to drop my face into the bowl. There’s so much fat in this, I could die of happiness. She doesn’t seem disturbed by my sloppy eating, or the smacking and moaning and grunting noises I’m making.
Then it’s back to scrubbing floors, haphazardly washing patients scheduled for surgery as well as those who are so bad off they can’t move a limb. My heart wants to be where Katvar is, but my mind needs all the available intel on the people of Alta, and why they sent their only aircraft to Tromsø and used up all the fuel they had. Why the BSA wants Tromsø, why the Sequencers didn’t come, and most of all — what people make of all the burning satellites that are still painting streaks of fire on the sky.
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